When evolution is called “settled science,” it’s easy to imagine the theory as largely in our scientific past. For many biologists, evolution is integral to their scientific present and future.Read more…
Science Reader Question: Life on the Edge
In between the admonition to multiply and an assembly of the resulting diverse humans, we have a series of stories in which someone has to ask “Is the kingdom of God for them too?” Invariably the answer is ‘yes.’Read more…
Science Reader Question: Which Came First, the Sinner or the Sin?
At the same time, the notion that there was a first Homo sapiens ultimately doesn’t work. If we followed humanity backwards in time, there would be no obvious place to draw a line between H. sapiens and earlier hominins.Read more…
Science Reader Question: Original Sin Goes Viral?
So to think about the effects of the primal sin, the concept which we call original sin, seems to hinge in Scripture on two things: our capacity as rational beings, and the exercise of this rational capacity to choose something other than God.Read more…
Science Reader Question: Becoming Made in God’s Image
This conversation on the relationship between an evolutionary natural history and man’s creation in the image of God reminds me of a saying in the world of software engineering: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”Read more…
Science Reader Question: Fugue in the Key of Adenine
Language metaphors for DNA are so natural we probably can’t get away from them entirely, but we can try other analogies beyond individual letters.Read more…
Science Reader Question: Seated at the Right 01101001 of God
Perhaps already you can see where a spiritual God would deal with relationships over forms since he himself does not have a form, and where a consistent God would be continually engaged in creation.Read more…
Science Reader Question: Evolutionary Project Management
Perhaps God expresses his intentions in this relational fashion. This is a very different paradigm than God-as-artist, where he directly selects every detail of the final product.Read more…
Science in Review: Have You Tried Turning Science Off And Turning It Back On Again?
[I]sn’t science supposed to be objective, not to mention correct? If [a] study really is that flawed, how did it get published in such a prestigious journal? If it is valid, why isn’t its validity objectively clear to all scientists?Read more…
Science Corner: Sorry (Not Sorry)
…[F]olks at Ohio State have figured out what ingredients you need to make your apology as acceptable as possible. While it might not be the most mind-bending research result ever, it’s one you’ll probably be able to use sooner or later.Read more…
Science Corner: Lab Girl
As the piece notes, Jahren is not typical of scientists who get book deals, but her experience is probably more typical of what a scientific career will look like than those of Nobel laureates.Read more…
Science Corner: The Ultimate Sacrifice
What they found is that cultures that sacrificed humans tended to subsequently develop stronger social stratification, assuming that their language-based lineage is correct. It’s an intriguing result, as is the overall notion of quantitatively studying religious and social evolution.Read more…
Science in Review: God or Supergod?
On those long, dark Saturdays of the soul, we’ll have a choice. We can adjust our idea of God for a complete explanation now—that God either acted evilly or God was unable to act—or we can believe God is consistent and gain the hope of Resurrection Sunday.Read more…
Science Corner: Road Grace
We might insist drivers get their act together, but a more pragmatic solution is to improve traffic models. Instead of assuming all drivers act the same way, we should account for actual human behavior. In other words, we need to add some grace to our traffic planning.Read more…
Science Corner: Go with God
What’s more striking to me is how counter-intuitive God’s solution is. No one expected the Messiah to die. No one expected the King of Kings to be coronated at his funeral. What comes naturally to us may not be part of God’s best plan for us.Read more…
The Passion and the Punctuated Day
It is not as mysterious as one might think. It testifies to a view of time as consisting of thresholds to be crossed, not containers to be filled. It emphasizes certain moments/thresholds as particularly meaningful. They serve as dividers between different periods. Crossing them is not moving from one uniform hour to the next, but moving from one state of being to another.Read more…
Science in Review: Is God Outside of Time?
God starting outside of time and coming inside is a tricky notion. When did that transition take place? We can talk about a specific moment from our perspective on the inside, but how do you talk about “when” outside of time? It’s a little like asking which room of your house your backyard is in. Even the notion of a transition that doesn’t take place in time is mind-bendy.Read more…
Cockcrow, Darkness, and the Coming Light
Cockcrows and astronomical twilight are not durations, but temporal thresholds—significant, transformative moments. The story of Peter’s denial is not just one of time passing while he denies, but of the second cockcrow being a moment of revelation—a moment of insight in which Peter reflects on his denials and weeps, and a moment that changes Peter forever.Read more…
Once Upon a Time: The Story of Creation Told in the Language of Science
If God is an artist, time itself is his medium of choice. The result is not forms, but transformations: chaos to order, dust to life.Read more…
Science Reader Question: What’s a Few Minutes Between Friends?
Did we spend our time well? Are we managing it as efficiently as possible? But if we measure our worth with time, what happens if not everyone agrees on the same measurement?Read more…
Science Reader Question: Time and Forgiveness
Effects follow causes; we must live in the future with all the intended and unintended results of our choices. We call this sequence of unrepeatable moments time. In other words, time is that feature of the universe which makes forgiveness necessary.Read more…
Science in Review: “Prediction is hard, especially about the future”
Statistical models, like those used to predict the weather, deal with uncertainty. This runs counter to our expectations for mathematics. Factor in a reliance on probabilities, which are deeply unintuitive, and it’s no wonder we find these models hard to understand. Nevertheless, they can actually be quite useful.Read more…
Science Reader Question: The Human Touch
Humans and statistical models both make errors sometimes. But we understand the human errors because we make the same kinds of mistakes, while statistical models can be wrong in surprising ways. Perhaps we think those errors are worse simply because they are different.Read more…
Science Reader Question: So You’d Like to Win a $1.5B Jackpot
We need to resist the urge to wonder “What are the odds this one specific person would have predicted this one drawing?!?!?” Instead, we should ask the statistical question: “Have enough predictions been made about enough lotteries to get positive results?”Read more…